9.07.2014

Combining a Refinery and Other Buildings

Hello! Its been a while since I've posted anything creative, but as the calendar starts to shift to Fall, my hobby and modeling time is back on the agenda again! I started a small project to basically combine a couple of smaller kits, and the reconcile the mess I made from one of my earlier wiring jobs (so pay attention, here is yet another Quinntopia mistake you can learn from! :-).

Below are sections from my Walther's Refinery kit as well as some Lyddle End (Hornby?) industrial buildings. As they sat together on my workbench while all the other parts of the layout were being removed, I thought that they all looked quite nice together and I should do something to combine them into one unit.

Additionally, I need to fix my original wiring solution that I had for the refinery. As you can see in the photo below, each wire lead exited from the bottom of a structure. This is a terrible arrangement as you then need to drill holes for each lead through the benchwork/tabletop!! So this would be fixing by consolidation/soldering all the separate leads into (ultimately) one lead (so that only one hole is needed for the installation of this structure).

So I've got most of the wiring, the base and my plan, I need to install some lampposts, add some details, paint the ground, etc... All in all a really fun little project! More details to come!

2 comments:

Hi! awesome blog. Just getting back into N. in the same boat as you with kids n such. I have a bunch of old German Trix stuff. I'm into CDN and US passenger stuff. Dad is german and got me these as a kid 82-90. My plan is to sell or swap for US streamliner or modern US stuff. Do you know any outlets?

Hi Rob! I'm not sure how exactly you could swap out the trains, but I've used eBay quite a bit to reduce my collection. Unfortunately, most trains don't really hold a lot of long-term value (they are not investments), so you may not get much for locomotives (mostly because newer modellers are better in quality, operation, detail, and digital, older locomotives - except for our of production and rare models, and not something in high demand), whereas certain good quality passenger cars or other quality rolling stock could hold up on price really well. I would recommend looking around on eBay and watching what similar items are selling for before you post anything (make sure to look for 'international sellers' as well since a lot of German based sellers sell to the US and CA through eBay).

About Me

I'm into N Scale to have fun. Growing up my Dad was really big into HO (U.S.A. of course, mostly Western U.S. roads like Great Northern, Milwaukee Road, Northern Pacific, etc...) and he built me a small N Scale layout which I enjoyed as a small boy. Of the various trains I had at the time, the brand 'Minitrix' stuck in my head. As the years passed, N Scale was forgotten as new interests took my time.
As a new parent, I got back into model trains through O Gauge (Lionel and MTH). However, the cost of this scale, and the space needed for the sort of layout I wanted, made it a very frustrating hobby. Then one day at a hobby shop in California, I came across the Trix 2003 catalog; Inside this catalog were beautiful models of trains across Europe shown on beautiful layouts - and I was converted! It took a few years, but most of the O Gauge was sold (or stored) and I used the funds to start my new fantasy in N Scale.
Soon, I also discovered the amazing trains of Japan in N Scale, and begin my quest to build an interesting urban layout in a complete fantasy setting where the great trains of the world can run side by side!